If you are on your own it's overkill to try the 'Ultimate' or 'Premium' version. Note also that you can install trial versions of the Visual Studio 2012.

7/7.5 apps: Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone.

7.5/8 apps: Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone.

Windows Phone (Silverlight 3/4, XNA) apps:.

Visual C++ 2010 Express (no WPF support, but COM+ support).

Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Desktop (Silverlight and XNA too).

Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8.

The lone exception being Visual Studio 2012 for Windows 8 which is technically installable on Windows 7, but requires considerable human effort to be able to build Win 8 apps.ĭepending on what app you want to write, here is how to choose:

They are freely available for 30 days and then require a free product key for ongoing use after 30 days (it takes only a few seconds to get the key, no big deal).īoth 20 versions are still available and nearly all compatible with Windows 7. They are great if you are on your own, or even within a small team of developers.

'Degraded' because Express versions do not support the whole Visual Studio plugin ecosystem. The free versions of Visual Studio are 'degraded' version of their big brother, each dedicated to a specific task (or language for 2010 versions).

Microsoft free visual studio